The literature is replete with products capable of cleaning hard surfaces such as ceramic tile floors, hardwood floors, counter tops and the like. In the context of cleaning floors, and in particular in the context of cleaning floors with a cleaning solution, numerous devices are described comprising a handle rotatably connected to a mop head having retaining means for maintaining an absorbent cleaning pad attached during the cleaning operation and a liquid delivery mechanism connected to the handle for dispensing a cleaning solution on the floor surface.
Typical disposable cleaning pads used with these devices include a bottom layer (also called floor sheet or scrubbing layer) and an absorbent core. The bottom layer includes a “functional” surface which is the surface (generally the lower surface) in contact with the hard surface during the cleaning operation.
One example of a “wet” cleaning device is the SWIFFER WETJET® cleaning implement, sold by The Procter & Gamble Company, which produces a spray of fine droplets of liquid delivered onto an area of about 0.3 m2. The SWIFFER WETJET® implement is preferably used with disposable absorbent cleaning pads, such as the SWIFFER WETJET® cleaning pads, which has an absorbent core comprising a water insoluble, water-swellable superabsorbent gelling polymers having a high absorbent capacity for absorbing and locking the soiled solution removed from the hard surface. The combination of this type of pad with the previously described implement is optimized in the sense that the cleaning solution is spread over a large area and the pad is designed to assure that only a minimum amount of dirty solution is squeezed out of the pad and released back onto the hard surface.
Another example of such a cleaning device is the CLOROX® READY-MOP® cleaning implement, sold by The Clorox Company, which includes a liquid delivery mechanism removably attachable to a reservoir. This liquid delivery mechanism only uses the potential energy of the column of liquid in the reservoir to dispense a puddle of solution onto the hard surface in front of the implement. This implement can be used with a disposable cleaning pad, such as the READY-MOP® cleaning pad which has an absorbent core predominantly made of a cellulosic material. This pad has a relatively low absorbent capacity and tend to release much more of the dirty solution onto the hard surface in comparison to the WETJET® cleaning pad.
One would assume that a SWIFFER WETJET® type cleaning pad, when used with an implement which delivers the cleaning solution over a small area such as CLOROX® READY-MOP® implement, would provide the same benefits as when this pad is used with a WETJET® implement. It is found however, that because the implement dispenses the cleaning solution over a relatively small area, the cleaning efficacy of this pad is not fully optimized.
It is therefore one object of this invention to provide an optimized cleaning pad which can be used with a cleaning implement that delivers the solution within a relatively small area.
It is also another object of this invention to provide a method of cleaning a hard surface with a cleaning implement conceived to deliver a cleaning solution within a relatively small area of the surface to be cleaned with a cleaning pad offering the same benefits as the superabsorbent type cleaning pads discussed hereinbefore without any of the negatives (such as for example, low absorbent capacity and liquid release) previously discussed.